Abstract

Service Function Chaining (SFC) enables services to be delivered by
selective traffic steering through an ordered set of service
functions. Once classified into an SFC, the traffic for a given flow
is steered through all the service functions of the SFC for the life
of the traffic flow even though this is often not necessary.
Steering traffic to service functions only while required and not
otherwise, leads to shorter SFC forwarding paths with improved
latencies, reduced resource consumption and better user experience.
This document describes the rationale, techniques and necessary
protocol extensions to achieve such optimization, with focus on one
such technique termed "simple offloads".